


Rough Waters

by SalParadiseLost



Series: Rising Tides [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Angst, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Bruce saves another child, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Human Bruce Wayne, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Mer AU, Mer Abuse, Mer Dick Grayson, Mer Jason Todd, Protective Bruce Wayne, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29982453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalParadiseLost/pseuds/SalParadiseLost
Summary: The last place Bruce thought he would see a mer was in a run-down pub on the edge of a seaside village.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Series: Rising Tides [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2208921
Comments: 55
Kudos: 251





	Rough Waters

The last place he thought he would see a mer was in a run-down pub on the edge of a seaside village.

This village was pretty much like every other one on this coast. White buildings partially crusted in sea salt with a continuously grey sky hanging over head. Bruce had seen hundreds of towns just like it, but Dick was still eager to explore. The teenage mer really was too curious for his own good, and Bruce could feel the hairs on his head greying because of it.

His son had practically launched himself off their ship the moment they had made landfall. Bruce had recently commissioned magic from a siren, an enchanted shell that gave Dick legs when he wore it, and Dick was using it at every chance he got.

Dick was safer in human form, protected from hunters by his borrowed legs, but that didn’t stop Bruce from worrying. Bruce had seen how dark the world could be to mers, and he didn’t want Dick to be hurt by it again. If he had it his way, Dick would stay safe on the ship and not be taking the risk at all.

Dick, though, desperately wanted to explore on his own. He was a teenager, with too much energy and too much curiosity for his own good. And as much as Bruce hated to admit it, keeping Dick locked up on a ship, wasn’t good for him. Kids needed room to grow, and if he didn’t allow it, Dick would only resent him for it. So Bruce grudgingly let Dick explore on his own, but only after he promised to meet Bruce at the local pub before sunset.

That was hours ago and now Bruce was sitting at a bar nursing a half-drunk pint of lackluster beer to his chest.

He looked up when the barkeep rang a small bell.

“One minute till, lads,” he announced, his face breaking out into a crooked smile.

There was the scrape of chairs against the wood floor and four huge men were standing up, each of them with cruel glint to their eyes. Bruce didn’t like the looks of this. He had seen evil in men before. He knew the signs. The muscles in his shoulders tensed as Bruce tracked their movements. They all looked past him, though, and lumbered over to a murky tank of water.

Bruce hadn’t noticed it before. It was small and shoved out of the way, partially hidden in shadows. Now that he was looking, he could see something red, floating towards the bottom of it.

His eyes flicked rapidly between the men and whatever was red at the bottom of the tank.

All four men stood around the edges of the tank, smirking cruelly into the murky water below. They shuffled at the rim of the glass, jabbing at each other and daring each other on. It reminded Bruce of a pack of wolves, playfully snapping at each over before a kill.

The barkeep came over and Bruce watched as he slid the top covering off the tank.

The water was still, but Bruce could definitely see something churning under it.

“Any second now. The brat can’t hold his breath for much longer.”

That was when Bruce noticed that they each had a knife in their hands.

Suddenly, there was a rush of movement and the red shape made a burst towards the surface of the water, trying to get a gulp of air. As it did, all four of the men lunged forward, dunking hands into the tank. The shape whipped around trying to dive back down into the safety of the water, but was abruptly caught.

Horror flashed through Bruce as one of the men crowed in delight, cruel glee lighting up on his face. He drew his arm up, and inch-by-inch revealed a small child, clutched by the hair.

No, not a child, Bruce realised, even though that didn’t get rid of the bone-chilling sense of horror that rested in his bones.

A mer.

A tiny one.

The kid couldn’t be more than three feet long and most of that was from the red tail. The tail should be glittering, not dull and ragged. The mer was thin, impossibly thin, and Bruce could count every single one of the ribs that threatened to poke through his chest. Everything about him looked washed out with skin too pale and dark, stressed-out circles framing his eyes.

The mer struggled in the man’s hold, his tiny hands scratching futilely at the arm that was pulling him from the water. Terror was written into every line of his body as he desperately fought to get back to the tank below.

The man, though, kept pulling up, up, up until the mer dangled fully in the air.

It screeched in pain and panic and the man only laughed.

“Do you want to be let go? I’ll let you go.”

The man released the kid’s hair, and the mer tumbled into a painful heap on the wooden floor below it. His body made a sickening thump and he let out a sharp, terrorised keen when he hit the ground.

The sound sent a jab to Bruce’s heart and suddenly his mind flashed back to the terrified mer noises that Dick had made years ago. When he had keened in the back of his throat for parents who had been slaughtered in a net in front of him. When he keened as he struggled to get free from the net around his own tail. When he keened for Bruce to help him and scoop him up from the fear.

Hearing it again, coming from a child that was so clearly terrorised, broke Bruce’s heart and crushed the shattered pieces.

He could only sit frozen as he watched the man begin to pull out his knife.

“Another one for me, boys!” he cackled and put a huge boot on the mer’s small back.

The boy whimpered under him, thrashing his tail desperately and trying to slip away from the heavy foot that was pinning him to the ground.

The knife came down, and the blade wedged under one of the mer’s dull, red scales. The mer cried in terror and pain as the man pulled it up, more, more _more_ , until his ripped it from the mer’s body.

The boy was screaming now, crying and keening for anyone to come save him as four men leered above him and one held his bloody scale up like a trophy.

“That’s my third one this week,” the man bragged, stepping off the whimpering mer and leaving it curled on the ground. He crossed the pub and dropped the scale in one of four jars.

Four jars that were each partially full of mer scales.

“Hah! Johnson, you’re getting slow. You haven’t pulled half the scales that I have,” one of them boasted, swinging his jar full of scales into another man’s face.

Bruce felt himself become sick as he realised the implications behind it. Dozens of scales. Dozens of times the boy was yanking from the safety of the water and tortured.

He looked back to the mer and found the boy struggling to get back into his tank. His thin arms were shaking as he tried to leverage his weight. His chests was racing in lingering fear and he kept shooting wary looks to the men who were now gathered around their individual jars. The place where the scale had been ripped from was bleeding, red blood sluggishly creating a puddle below him.

It was just one of many sores on the mer’s body. Scars and open wounds littered the child, each of them ugly in the dim pub light. Patches of puffy flesh were scattered throughout the mer’s tail and up the scales on the kid’s back. Bruce’s stomach turned when he saw the colour of them, yellow and white, gnarled with infection that would slowly kill the child.

The mer’s arm buckled, collapsing under the mer’s weight before he could shove himself back into the water. He fell back on to the floor, crying out when he landed on his already bleeding wound.

“Stupid beast,” the barkeep muttered, and the mer flinched. The man began stomping over, and the child tried to curl up as small as possible, hiding behind his own tail.

The barkeeper grabbed the mer’s dorsal fin, even as the mer yelped in pain because of it, and hoisted the boy back into the dirty water. The mer shot down to the bottom, shoving himself into a corner, far away from the surface.

The water was so murky that Bruce couldn’t see any more of his features, only a miserable red blur at the bottom of a glass cage.

The barkeep put the top began on the tank, turning around and catching Bruce’s eye. He smiled and Bruce thinks it was supposed to be friendly, but he could only see the cruelty in it.

“Like what you see, traveller?” he said, slapping the top of the tank. The red blur at the bottom shuttered.

Bruce had to fight not to grimace. He really wanted to do worse than grimace, but he held himself back for now. He forced a smile and accessed the man.

“I’ve never seen a mer before. Where did you get him?”

“I caught him myself,” the man bragged, putting a proud thumb to his chest, “There’s a mer nesting ground not too far away from here. Mers are usually hella protective of their pups, but this one’s father didn’t even fight me for him. Guess the mother must have died or something,” the man shrugged.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed and he knew he couldn’t keep all the anger out of his gaze. “Aren’t mers dangerous? Even when they’re young, they are still deadly.”

The barkeep smiled, each of his teeth yellow and crooked. “The key is to stop them from singing. The beast was too young when I got him, all he could do was cry. Now, though, what I do is stick some broken glass in the fish I feed him. He swallows them down, his throat gets torn up and he can’t sing. Perfect solution.”

 _Perfect solution._ The words rang around Bruce’s head and he thought he might throw up. This was torture. All this was torture for no reason and these men had turned it into a game.

A game that was slowly killing the child in a cage.

“Do you want to see?” the barkeeper said, meeting Bruce’s eyes conspiratorially. Before he could answer, (No. He didn’t want to see. Why would anyone want to see a child get tortured?) the man was lumbering back around the counter and pulled out a bucket full of rotting fish.

Bruce’s eyes widened as he saw the edges of glass sticking out of the fish’s flesh. Small bits of razor edge that were designed to tear a throat apart.

Horror sunk in his stomach, and he wanted to punch something. But he was frozen as the man pulled the small mer from the water again. The mer thrashed again, but slower, weaker, clearly exhausted and in pain from the treatment he got moments before.

The man leveraged the boy against the side of the tank, its harsh edge digging into the tender skin of the boy’s waist. The mer was panicking now, his small chest going so fast that Bruce worried it might burst.

“Open up, beast,” the man hissed, and the mer cowered. The boy’s eyes caught on the fish, and they became wide in hunger and fear. He was starving, but he also saw the bits of glass on the fish’s skin.

Slowly, so slowly, the mer opened his mouth, and Bruce held back a pained sound as he realised half of the mer’s sharp teeth had been pulled out.

The man shoved the fish in, and the mer instantly began struggling.

He thrashed and cried, fighting the man holding him down and making him swallow. His tail churned the water, flinging it everywhere. Tears were in his eyes and he kept trying to fight, kept trying to get the man to let him go. The boy tried to keen, but the sound aborted in his throat, turning into a pained gurgle halfway through. His thin throat trembled and Bruce watched as he visibly forced himself not to make any more sounds. The mer couldn’t help a cough, though, and blood spattered on the side of the tank.

The barkeeper laughed, and the sound chilled Bruce’s spine.

Then, in a quick motion, he released the mer, letting the tortured boy sink to the bottom again. Bruce hated the way, the boy just drifted down, almost like he was already a corpse.

The barkeeper casually returned to the bar as if nothing had happened, chatting casually to one of his regulars and cleaning a glass.

Bruce, though, he couldn’t turn away from the murky water and the tendrils of blood that floated in it.

“Hey Bruce,” a familiar voice chirped at his side and he started, whipping around to see Dick grinning at him.

His boy was flushed like he had run all the way here and practically glowing in contented excitement. Both his hands clasped the straps of a backpack, which Bruce knew had Dick’s magic seashell was shoved at the bottom of it. His blue eyes were so full— full of life, full of innocent curiosity, full of the carefree ease of a child that knew he was safe and protected.

Nothing like the empty eyes of the mer sitting at the bottom of the tank.

Suddenly, a deep panic slammed into Bruce and he desperately wanted to curl Dick into his chest and get him as far away from this pub as he possibly could. These men didn’t see any issue with hurting a mer child; what would stop them from torturing another?

If they had the chance, would they take Dick’s shell away? Would they hold it over him as he struggled on the ground, helpless and scared? Would they even care as he cried and begged to have it back?

Or would they begin to tear scales away from him too? Ripping Dick’s beautiful blue tail away from him, piece-by-piece.

Bruce knew the answer. He didn’t want to say it to himself, but he knew.

He looked between Dick and the red figure at the bottom of the tank, torn between putting as much distance between Dick and the barkeeper as he could, and staying for the little mer in the tank.

“Bruce?” Dick’s voice had an edge of worry as he read the distress on Bruce’s face. “Bruce, what’s wrong?”

He put a hand around Dick’s wrist and brought the boy to his side. Dick stumbled against him, but didn’t pull away. Nervousness was beginning to fill the boy as he scanned the pub for potential threats and tightened his hands around the straps of his backpack.

Bruce knew the smart, _safe_ choice would be to leave. To silently turn Dick around, and walk him out the front door before anyone could even think to lay a hand on him.

But Bruce knew he wouldn’t do that.

Not when a child had just been tortured in front of him, screaming for help just like Dick had done all those years ago.

Not when he saw the kid, and some deep part inside him whispered _mine._

“I’ll buy him,” Bruce said, swivelling around and meeting the barkeeper’s eyes. The man across the counter startled and almost dropped the glass he was cleaning.

“Excuse me?”

“The mer child,” Bruce insisted, “I’ll buy him.”

The barkeeper’s eyes turned dangerously sharp, and Bruce felt Dick, practically hide behind him. The boy’s hands came up, twisting in Bruce’s shirt, and he could feel Dick’s breath getting quicker against his side.

“He ain’t for sale. He’s my greatest prize.”

“Everyone has a price,” Bruce said firmly. “Name yours.”

The man paused, gaze lingering between Bruce, the tailored clothes he was wearing and Dick who was plastered to his side.

“1000” the man said finally, clearing thinking the price was far more than Bruce was willing to pay.

Bruce didn’t even blink. “Done.”

The man physically shook, shocked at how quickly Bruce accepted. “You’re serious?”

“How much for the tank he’s in?” Bruce added, already counting out the gold he needed to pay the man.

The barkeeper, though, turned red. “Just who do you think you are? Fucking city folk. The mer is mine.” The four men that had tortured the mer earlier were all looking at him. 

Bruce slammed the gold on the counter in front of him. He met the barkeeper’s eyes, as dangerously as he possibly could.

“I’m taking the mer one way or another. You can either let me pay for him, or I take him by force.”

It would be a hard fight, but not one Bruce couldn’t win. He doubted these men had any training at all and, if worst came to worst, Dick could always sing.

The man growled, but greedily accepted the gold. He counted it out and grunted, silently letting Bruce cross him and go towards the tank.

“I ain’t selling you the tank. Take the beast and get out,” he spat, obviously not happy about it, but men like him could never resist the allure of gold.

Dick pattered behind him, not going out of arm’s reach of Bruce. He obviously didn’t know what was going on, but he didn’t stray from his father’s side.

Bruce pulled the cover off the tank again, hating the way that the miserable red shape below tried to curl up impossibly smaller.

He wanted to tell the mer that he would be okay now. Bruce was going to take him from this place and never let these men touch him again. He would be safe and cared for, Bruce swore it on his own life.

Gently, he dipped his arms into the tank and began to draw the mer out. The boy obviously didn’t want to go. He dodged Bruce’s hands, but there wasn’t anywhere for him to go. The tank was too small, and there wasn’t anything for him to hide behind.

Eventually, the mer just gave up, going limp in Bruce’s hold and not struggling as Bruce pulled him out.

There were silent tears going down his face, and he trembled in Bruce’s arms. He didn’t dare meet Bruce’s eyes, only brace himself for the torture he was clearly expecting to come.

Every single tiny movement, the clear terror written in the mer’s body, the open infected wounds that still were bleeding, everything about the mer broke Bruce’s heart all over again.

He desperately wanted to clutch the kid close, but he knew it would only terrorise him more. He would someday, but not now.

Beside him, Dick gasped, going completely white at the sight of the brutalised child.

“Bruce?” he questioned, eyes going between the smaller mer and his father.

Bruce didn’t say anything. He turned around, made sure that his grip on the mer was secure, and took both of his children out of the pub and towards safety.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! This is a super quick idea that I just couldn't leave alone. I love a mer au. I might be convinced to write a Jason's POV of Bruce taking him home version of this story. I haven't decided, but maybe. We will see.
> 
> \-----
> 
> You can visit my tumblr at [ SalParadiseLost ](https://salparadiselost.tumblr.com) where I post tumblr things and general writing musings.
> 
> Please leave a kudos and comment! Flattery gets you everywhere.


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